In any case, my little slice of the blogospheroid is humbuggery.net, add if you please, I always enjoy you smart people talking about sciency things… I’ve never been on a fancy scienceblagroll o’theinternets before.

Greg– I want PZs fancy rotating blag roll in his side bar, with a full list on a tab. Im trying to bully him into giving me his html code for that neat rotating thingie– Ive been coveting it for ages ðŸ˜›

lol @ efrique– escatsy and fluoresence are two words I will never be capable of spelling properly. Ur blog name is not helping.

Oh, while you got help for “ecstasy” (me too, btw – love Ffox spell-check), try writing “fluorescence microscopy” on a daily basis. Soon, fluorescence will begin to flow out of your keyboard (though it also might mean you track etbr in somewhere).

Endogenous retroviruses are nifty, so I’d be pleased to be on your blogroll (or BLAAAAAG ROLLLLL if you prefer)…

Posts on The Big Room tend to cluster around Microbiology/Brewing/Food Science and Neogeography/mapping/travel, with the occasional digression into other usually-scientific (or technical) matters – and I’m eager for commenters.

I’m still shocked that Randall didn’t have “Inter-tron” on that chart.

Oh, yeah, and I’d love to be on the blogroll, if you’ll hold no grudge for being on your old, (don’t be) evil provider. I’ll even reciprocate, because I enjoy really snarky, intelligent science folk, but mostly because I’m lazy and just haven’t gotten around to it before now.

Timing, timing. I’m about to disappear for work and vacation travel, so my blog won’t be updated until July. On the other hand, folks (per my last post there) can send in thoughts for making it a livelier place when I get back. (Knowing that I’d be leaving for a month, I haven’t been putting up as much as I will after I get back.)

Mine is semi-random but usually science related. I did use it to help start a mini war with our college TV station regarding proselytizing on public $$$. ERV is already on my blogroll. Actually, it’s number one. Don’t tell PZ.

Here’s an interesting article in the NYTimes regarding science education in Texas. Laura Beil, the author, outlines the long-standing (pre-Dover) attempt by critics of evolutionary theory to teach the theory’s “strengths and weaknesses.” Although mandating that the weaknesses of evolutionary theory be taught falls well short of attempts to mandate the teaching of intelligent design, this too is unacceptable with hardcore evolutionists such as the National Center for Selling Evolution (NCSE). Their strategy to counter it? Treat any attempt to teach weaknesses of evolutionary theory as stealth creationism, therefore as religion, and therefore as unconstitutional.

This approach, however, may backfire. The NCSE cannot simply deny that there are any known weaknesses to evolutionary theory, because laundry lists outlining failures of the theory to match up with data are well known and widely circulated. But to engage in a discussion about why, for instance, the Cambrian explosion does or doesn’t count as negative evidence against evolutionary theory underscores that there is a legitimate scientific controversy here. The temptation will therefore be for the NCSE to argue, though they’ll be sure to soft-pedal it, that there can be no weaknesses to the theory. But that will raise the question whether anything could count as evidence against it. Haldane’s “rabbit fossil in the pre-Cambrian” doesn’t go nearly far enough here. Either the NCSE will have to outline the types of evidence that could count against evolutionary theory, or they’ll have to deny flat out that any evidence can count against it.

But if no evidence can count against a claim, how can it be scientific? Scientific claims, it would seem, must minimally be open to confirmation or disconfirmation in light of evidence. Unlike mandating the teaching of ID, mandating the teaching of evolution’s strengths and weaknesses may hold some promise for breaking the scientific materialists’ stranglehold over America’s public school science curriculum.